AN OPEN SEASON 215 



are water engineers and pretty good woodsmen. 

 Although good workers when they need to work, 

 yet beavers avoid all useless work. Being 

 efficient fellows, doing their best and planning 

 ahead, they need to do but little work say, 

 not more than a month or two each year and 

 play the remainder of the time. 



So imagine a beaver, who puts in weeks at a 

 time exploring the wilds or playing with other 

 beavers imagine this successful, good-natured 

 loafer having stories written about him that tell 

 of his working every day, rising at four in the 

 morning, and never stopping to have a picnic 

 or to comb his thick fur. Well, I would not 

 bore them by reading such solemn sermons, be- 

 cause beavers would think that something must 

 be wrong with my education, and that safety 

 first called them to dive into deep water. 



Beavers are vegetarians, live chiefly on bark, 

 with grass and berries incidental. They do not 

 eat meat and fish. But ever so often we read 

 of beavers ruining the fishing by hogging all the 

 fish. The next time a beaver shows his head I 

 may ask him what kind of bait is used, and if he 

 loafs on the bank, smoking, while waiting for a 

 bite. 



Hunters say that wild geese and loons are 

 wide-awake people and that skill is needed to get 

 within shooting distance. Just how it came 



